Now, Who do We Have Left? Has the CBC Joined the Ranks of the Other Harpercon Cheerleaders?

Contrary what the whining Blogging Tories might tell anyone who’ll listen, the Corporate media of today is very slanted to the right and they pretty much tell us who to vote for. They tell us what to believe, what our priorities should be and how to feel.  Sometimes, their stories, columns and various articles are soooo biased as to have inaccuracies at times. Lots of material for a neo-con blogger, who for the most part, seems to like inventing facts to skew things in their favor.

Progressives, did, however, have one major media outfit (besides the Toronto Star) to get their news, quality news talk radio programming (better than what Astral or even Corus have to offer up these days). Bloggers could even cite quotes from their pages, like with any other source, that is up until now.

Many bloggers have already expressed their frustration so I won’t get into all the details. You can catch some good posts on this subject over at Law Is Cool is one. You can catch other posts over at Progressive Bloggers.

To make a long story short, the CBC hired an American Copyright vigilante firm, icopyright, the same firm used by the Associated Press, to protect their online content. iCopyright is basically offering license to quote from the CBC’s online articles for a price. Articles from an outfit that is mainly tax payer funded, no less.  They want to charge a fee per month to those who use their articles on their websites. Apparently, this pertains to the whole article. There is nothing stipulated about using simply quoting a part of the article. How ridiculous!

Does this set a dangerous precedent? Using an entire article, especially without crediting the source would be a copyright enfringement, but how about when we only use say, a paragraph to quote someone?

When students write a term paper or non-fiction is written, paragraphs and quotes are often cited to strengthen one’s arguement or back up their facts. Footnotes are used as well as a bibliography to indicate the sources. Now, with the CBC (through the efforts of iCopyright) planning their attempt to gouge money from somewhere, would that set a precedent for books, encyclopedia’s, newspapers and other media? However, I digress.

Furthermore, it would seem that free speech would be hindered:

…And you have to agree not to criticize the CBC, the subject of the article, or its author.

To add insult to injury? How about this?

iCopyright offers a reward of up to $1,000,000 for snitching on bloggers who don’t pay Danegeld to Canada’s public broadcaster to quote the works they funded.

How would a potential snitch know if in fact the user of a quote from the CBC didn’t pay the appropriate fees?

I guess for us bloggers, we’ll have to paraphrase if we absolutely must use something from the CBC for our blogs or, if you’re more technically savvy, Law Is Cool has a suggestion.

I also have to wonder why they’re using an American Firm.

All of this is disconcerting enough. However, when I read the comments over at Big City Lib’s, a commenter who goes by Rural Sandi made me stop and wonder.

…it’s a Con scam to try to destroy it – new head of CBC is a Harper Con supporter.

I wonder which head this person is referring to? Hubert Lacroix, the President? Richard Stursberg, executive vice-president? Or the most recent addition of general manager, Jennifer Maguire. To be fair, in my quick research, I haven’t found anything to support that either of those three were Harpercon supporters. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s not true neither.  In fact, it would start to make sense.

Remember Peter Mansbridge’s recent interview with Stevie regarding proroguation? Many of us were so disappointed that Mansbridge didn’t grill him hard enough; he wasn’t agressive enough. That is one example of a Harpercon leaning act by the CBC.

The CBC, in hiring an American copyright licensing firm, would certainly now seem in step with the Harpercons with its’ preference of all things American.

Assuming that any of the CBC’s executive were Harpercon cheerleaders and their decision in hiring iCopyright is a Con conspiracy; are they just trying to be sympathetic to ol’ Stevie so they can stay in business, that is, until Stevie pulls the plug?

Or is this due to all the cuts the Harpercons made to the CBC and they’re trying to find other ways of making money? If that is the case, I can certainly think of better ways to achieve this end.

Apparently, I think one would still be safe if they quoted a sentence or paragraph from the CBC without too much happening. At about 250$ per month for one single article, I think it’s a safe assumption that not too many of these licenses will be sold.  However, it is the principle of it that dictates that we should try to no longer use their content for our blogs.

With most of  the news outlets basically telling us to support Stevie and the Harpercons,  our choices for balanced and/or progressive outlets are getting few and far between. Funny how those neo-cons love to lament about the Liberal biased media.